Parity in mathematics: actions supported by CNRS Mathematics in 2024

2024 Laboratories' gender advisors 2024

Insmi's network of parity coordinators meets twice a year: by videoconference in December and in person in June. In 2024, the day for Insmi laboratories' gender advisors (journée des référentes et référents parité) took place on June 06 at the Institut Camille Jordan (Lyon).

Around thirty people gathered to discuss these issues, focusing on calls for action, statistics and parity news. In the morning, three relevant testimonials were presented by parity referents: Isabelle Chalendar (Laboratoire d'analyse et de mathématiques appliquées, LAMA, Marne-La-Vallée), Sara Checcoli (Institut Fourier, IF, Grenoble), Hélène Mathis (Institut Montpellierrain Alexander Grothendieck, IMAG, Montpellier). In the afternoon, a workshop on the imposture syndrome was led by Natacha Portier.

Les Mouettes savantes: 1st successful edition of an inclusive course

Following in the footsteps of Les Cigales, a project initiated by CIRM (Marseille), Brittany hosted the ^1st edition of Mouettes Savantes from June 24 to 28, 2024. Funds from Insmi's “Appel à Action Parité” were used to finance part of the week-long course, making it completely free of charge for participants. A look back at the success of this project with the four organizers: Marie-Pierre Étienne (IRMAR, Institut de recherche mathématique de Rennes), Juliette Legrand (Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Bretagne Atlantique, LMBA, Brest), Anna Bonnet (Laboratoire de Probabilités, Statistique et Modélisation, LPSM, Paris) and Sophie Donnet (MIA-Paris-Saclay, AgroParisTech, INRAE, Palaiseau).

The idea came to the organizers after a suggestion from Olga Paris-Romaskevich, co-organizer of Les Cigales. “ At the time ”, explains Marie-Pierre Etienne, ” Anna Bonnet, Sophie Donnet and I were at the Paimpont biological station, in the heart of the Brocéliande forest, for a workshop on our subjects. We thought it would be a good place to do something with our own particular penchant for using maths (or more precisely, statistics) in connection with biological applications. We said to ourselves: this is another way of reaching out to girls, saying to ourselves that it's not math for math's sake, it's math at the service of ”. Juliette Legrand then joined the adventure.

Divided into three groups, the 20 high school girls worked for a week on different projects:

• Tracking temperatures to understand climate change,
• Calculating the carbon footprint of food consumption and evaluating food choices during the stay,
• Non-invasive monitoring of biodiversity using camera traps.

“ We offered them 3 projects with very different applications ”, adds Anna Bonnet, ‘ from climate to ecology, via the carbon impact of food... it showed them a whole host of applications for which they didn't necessarily have any idea that there was mathematics behind them ’. For each of the subjects, they obtained a final result that made the experiment a reality. Juliette Legrand observes that, from an initially academic setting, the participants “ gradually got to grips with the subjects and started thinking together, which is really what we wanted: collective emulation. The evolution was quite obvious in all the groups “. Marie-Pierre Etienne adds: “ Even in their relationship with us: we got away from the teacher-student distance, which was a real lifesaver. The trigger: a werewolf game, where a student killed me in the first round: that changed something!

A varied public

To select the participants, the team first identified 10 high schools in conjunction with the local education authority: 5 in the Paris region and 5 in the Rennes region. The schools are of different backgrounds: the aim is to mix the public. Marie-Pierre Etienne explains: “ We contacted the maths teachers in these high schools to ask them to choose 2 girls from their school directly. So there were 2 girls per school ”. For the organizers, this technique proved fruitful: “ Letting the teachers at each lycée choose had several advantages,” explains Anna Bonnet. “ On the one hand, we didn't give them strict criteria, so they didn't choose the same profile of girls from one class to another, and that helped to mix up the audience a little more. On the other hand, we realized that we'd been sent some very nice girls! Very different, but highly motivated for everything, i.e. not just the math projects, but also the outdoor activities and social events “. The animators, Manon and Fanny, were students in statistics or mathematics, while the director lived next door to the station. The enthusiasm of all participants, high school students and supervisors alike, made the whole week a great pleasure.

A heavy workload

The organizers agree, however, on the heavy workload involved in organizing such a course, especially for the first edition. “ If we'd known it would be so much work, we wouldn't have done it,” notes Marie-Pierre Etienne. “ We recruited a holiday director quite late in the day, and when she arrived she actually helped us a lot. We learned on the job: the specific rules governing the hosting of minors, the logistical aspects of the stay, the agreement and payment documents... to be honest, it was really a lot of work... There were times when we hesitated to continue. We were going to reach 20 girls and we were spending an inordinate amount of time. But the week was such a bubble of good humor and success that we want to go back, telling ourselves that the experience will come in handy again. We know how to proceed, we've learned, so it's going to be easier. We know better where to go, who to contact ...”.

A project supported by the “Appel à Action Parité

The team divided up the various funding applications. Anna Bonnet was in charge of Insmi's Appel à Action Parité (AAA-Parité) application. “ The application had to be submitted by a laboratory in a CNRS unit, which was my case. Honestly, it wasn't too difficult a procedure, and it went well,” she reassures us.

Financial resources are crucial for this type of project to see the light of day, but the budget is bound to evolve. In 2024, for example, out of a total budget of €21,000, €5,000 was used to finance a promotional film for the internship, with the idea of distributing it to other high schools to promote the experience. As Marie-Pierre Etienne reminds us, “ it has to serve more than just the 20 girls who come ”. This type of expense is only envisaged for this first edition, in order to present the course.

In 2025, the course will welcome ten more girls. The team has already recruited a fifth organizer, but Anna Bonnet assures us that “ if anyone contacts us and says they'd like to help organize the event... we'd love to!

Gender equality initiatives supported by Insmi in 2024

The release of the book “ Matheuses. Les filles, avenir des mathématiques “ by Clémence Perronnet, Claire Marc and Olga Paris-Romaskevich was undoubtedly a key event in early 2024. The Insmi, which monitors news of the book (see https://www.insmi.cnrs.fr/fr/matheuse s), distributed many copies to local education authorities, partners, the media and all the parity references in its laboratories.

For the past 2 years, two annual meetings have been organized as part of the network of parity references in the laboratories: in December by videoconference, and in June in person. The next meetings will take place in December 2024 and on June 5, 2025 at CNRS headquarters in Paris.

Introduced 1 year ago, Insmi organizes a meeting with the laboratories' parity references prior to their dialogues on objectives and resources (DOR). This is a time for exchanging ideas and taking stock of the structure's situation, difficulties and projects. It also serves to prepare for the DOR and to mobilize a specific moment for questions of parity and inclusivity.

The Call for Action on Parity (AAAP) was launched for the first time in 2024. It is aimed at all Insmi's UMRs and federations, with the aim of financing or co-financing actions of various types and sizes. For its first edition, all 25 applications received support under this call, with an average grant of around €2,450. Several types of action were carried out:

• Actions in favor of colleagues: training in gender-based violence (GBV), organization of women-to-women events, funding of gender-related missions.
• Initiatives for female Master's students: missions (e.g. for the Sophie Kowaleski readings) and organization of student/researcher meetings.
• Actions aimed at young people: cicadas, storks, seagulls, etc. “ Girls, maths and computing: a luminous equation” days , “ Math C for L ” days.
• Outreach initiatives, such as “Women and Maths” exhibitions.

The 2025 edition was renewed at the beginning of September, with laboratories and federations expected to return by November 4, 2024.

Insmi remains very concerned about the situation regarding parity and the presence of women in mathematics. After granting a financial bonus until 2022 to laboratories that had recruited at least one woman out of the last three teacher-researcher recruitments, laboratories that fail to meet this requirement will contribute to the financing of actions in favor of parity through a deduction from their basic allocations (3% if only one woman has been recruited out of the last 6 recruitments, and 6% if no women have been recruited). Also alarming is the fall in the number of women enrolled in doctoral programs (21% in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, compared with around 30% in early 2010). Insmi is urging its laboratories to take up this issue and implement their own initiatives to increase the number of female PhD students.

And last but not least, you can find information, statistics, documents and reports on parity issues on the https://parite.math.cnrs.fr website, which we update regularly.